The Brothers Karamazov

(coco) #1

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up to the gate and all at once she distinctly heard Grigory
calling her by name, Marfa! Marfa!’ in a weak, moaning,
dreadful voice.
‘Lord, preserve us from harm!’ Marfa Ignatyevna mur-
mured, and ran towards the voice, and that was how she
found Grigory. But she found him not by the fence where
he had been knocked down, but about twenty paces off. It
appeared later, that he had crawled away on coming to him-
self, and probably had been a long time getting so far, losing
consciousness several times. She noticed at once that he was
covered with blood, and screamed at the top of her voice.
Grigory was muttering incoherently:
‘He has murdered... his father murdered.... Why scream,
silly... run... fetch someone..’
But Marfa continued screaming, and seeing that her
master’s window was open and that there was a candle
alight in the window, she ran there and began calling Fy-
odor Pavlovitch. But peeping in at the window, she saw a
fearful sight. Her master was lying on his back, motion-
less, on the floor. His light-coloured dressing-gown and
white shirt were soaked with blood. The candle on the table
brightly lighted up the blood and the motionless dead face
of Fyodor Pavlovitch.
Terror-stricken, Marfa rushed away from the win-
dow, ran out of the garden, drew the bolt of the big gate
and ran headlong by the back way to the neighbour, Marya
Konndratyevna. Both mother and daughter were asleep,
but they waked up at Marfa’s desperate and persistent
screaming and knocking at the shutter. Marfa, shrieking

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